You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Use a cleaning agreement template to streamline and improve your proposals.
As a building services contractor, you cover a lot of ground, and your clients may hire you for full-service building maintenance, simple quarterly jobs, or something in between, like regular lawn care or cleaning. With such a varied list of clients and responsibilities, it makes sense to use a template for your service agreements.
Although we want to help you create a cleaning agreement template you can customize and use over and over, a lot of these suggestions work for other areas of your business. For instance, ensuring that your preferred method of payment is written into your template works with any agreement you might make. And it will help you attract and retain customers.
How, exactly, will a cleaning agreement template help you improve customer satisfaction and lead to more business? An agreement, in this sense, simply states what services you will provide, how and when you will provide them, the payment you expect for those services, and the duration of the relationship. The details of this make it clear to both you and the customer what each of you can expect from the other. Importantly, with an agreement that spells out the responsibilities, you both have something to refer to in the event of a misunderstanding.
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A DIY cleaning agreement template designed just for you
1. Contact Information
So what belongs in your cleaning agreement template? Since this is a business document, always make sure to include your contact information. That consists of your business name, address, telephone number, email address, and website. Similarly, make sure there is a space for the business or contact information of your clients.
2. Checklists
Include exactly what work you are agreeing to do, where the work will take place, who is responsible for the cleaning supplies, and when the work will be done. This would be an excellent place to itemize tasks. Checklists work great for this as it makes it easy for you and your client to visualize what you are agreeing to and it is a subtle way to upsell more services.
For example, if you’ve checked sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping, the unchecked “steam cleaning rugs” really stand out. Similarly, with supplies you may be able to charge a premium for anything you furnish, and it’s easier to justify that once your client sees how often they’ll need to buy trash liners or hand soap on their own.
3. Payment Policy
Lastly, state your expectations for payment and include a renewal or cancellation policy. In many cases, 30 days’ notice is sufficient, but that’s entirely up to you. Make sure this is effective for both you and the client. That way, they don’t feel committed to a long-term contract that might make them reluctant to do business with you. And for you, it’s a simple way to get out of a contract with a client that becomes difficult to work with.
This is all fairly standard information, so the question, of course, is how one cleaning agreement template can be “the best.” Let’s look back at that middle section for a minute – the checklist of duties. This is where you can really stand out. How?
Creating a Checklist of Duties
Every commercial cleaning company and building services contractor has a list of duties: wash windows, sweep and mop tile floors, clean bathroom including toilet and sink, and on and on. However, that could look a lot more appealing to a potential client if you list those same tasks in a way that looks like this:
- Wash windows inside and out with proprietary streak-free cleaner
- Sweep and mop tile floors daily, including moving chairs and small tables to ensure the entire floor is cleaned to meet and exceed industry standards
- Clean bathrooms daily, using a commercial-grade disinfectant on all high-touch surfaces including toilets and sinks
Even though in practice both sets of duties might be the same, the second one offers more value to your client, and it reflects more accurately the level of effort you put into your work.
Taglines
The same can apply to the products and equipment you use, as well as any certifications you may hold. Again, here are two examples of a possible mission statement or tagline on your cleaning agreement template:
Our certified technicians use only environmentally-friendly cleaners and the best equipment in the industry.
Vs.
All of our technicians hold a Green Cleaning Certification from ISSA’s Cleaning Management Institute, and we use only Green Seal-certified products and Energy Star-certified equipment.
If you were looking for an environmentally-conscious cleaning service, which would you choose?
While you’re at it, your task list can do a lot to highlight the value your client gets by working with you. Listing the services provided with your “standard” agreement points out how much your team does. Additionally, including a section of “additional services” makes it obvious how much more is available.
For example:
The following services are provided in our comprehensive standard agreement:
- Wash windows inside and out with proprietary streak-free cleaner
- Sweep and mop tile floors daily, including moving chairs and small tables to ensure the entire floor is cleaned to meet and exceed industry standards
- Vacuum all rugs with HEPA vacuums, including moving chairs and small tables to ensure the entire floor is cleaned to meet and exceed industry standards
- Clean bathrooms daily, using a commercial-grade disinfectant on all high-touch surfaces including toilets and sinks
Additional services available include:
- Checking and replacing HVAC system filters with premium, HEPA-quality air filters
- Seasonal deep clean to limit the spread of allergens and germs
- Replacing light bulbs with energy-efficient, cost-saving bulbs as needed
Again, the idea here is to subtly upsell all that you have to offer. And, of course, using a digital version of your cleaning agreement template makes it easy to add or delete items whenever you need to update your offerings.
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